Increasing economic prosperity for developing countries is related not only to rising trade, but also – and more important – to transforming the traditional composition of what they produce and export. In the world today, many developing countries strive to diversify away from exporting commodities toward higher-value-added goods and services.

The evolution of trade and investment flows over the last three decades shows that foreign direct investment (FDI) can be a powerful driver of exports, a creator of well-paid new jobs and a crucial source of financing. More important, FDI may become a very rapid and effective engine to promote the transfer of technology, know-how and new business practices, helping to raise productivity and setting a country on the course of convergence. This is particularly the case of efficiency-seeking FDI – that is, FDI that locates productive processes in a country seeking to enhance its ability to better compete in international markets-.

The benefits of FDI are further leveraged when local firms can catalyze the presence of foreign investors to connect to global and regional value chains (GVCs). As a result of new international firms investing in a host country, great new opportunities arise for local enterprises to supply the inputs – be it goods or services – that their international counterparts need.

This has been the experience of Bangladesh, where local suppliers have grown in tandem with foreign investors in the garment sector. It is through linkages with international investors that local firms can gradually be lured into producing new goods and services that, until then, were not produced in the host country. This is how economic diversification and greater value added are generated.

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) and their key partners (Tier 1 suppliers) are generally keen to source locally if a competitive local supplier can be found. However, they are also reluctant to absorb high search-and-find costs, and they will typically not invest in assisting local suppliers with upgrading efforts. Likewise, local firms are generally keen to supply to foreign firms, but are often not ready to make the necessary investments in technology and in processes to meet strict quality standards without a clear line of sight on potential payoff for such investment.

Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) currently have a very limited role in climate finance and green investment – reportedly, below the average for institutional investors. According to the Asset Owners Disclosure Project (AODP), which evaluates institutional investors on the basis of their low-carbon performance, five of the 10 lowest-rated large investment funds were SWFs.

However, the more progressive SWFs are currently divesting from assets with large climate-related risks, and some countries are pondering whether their SWF should take a more pro-active role in green finance. What lies ahead for SWFs in this rapidly changing landscape?

SWFs could have an impact on climate finance

The sheer amount of capital managed by SWFs means that their impact on green finance, while marginal historically, has the potential to become significant. According to the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute (SWFI), SWFs hold assets worth approximately $7.4 trillion, and the total capital of SWFs has more than tripled over the last decade.

But SWFs’ mandate does not typically include green finance. To the extent that they have been active in this area, it has been to reduce climate-related risk to their portfolios – including exposure to fossil fuels. For example, last October the $22.6 billion New Zealand Superannuation Fund (NZSF) announced a strategy to address climate-change risks that represent a “material” issue for long-term investors, and to “intensify its efforts” in areas including alternative energy, energy efficiency and “transformational” infrastructure. Norway’s giant Government Pension Fund Global ($873 billion) has adopted similar policies to reduce climate-related risk.

Farmers, like these women in Nepal, are eager to help the agriculture sector become part of the solution to climate change. / Photo: Neil Palmer/CIAT

It’s widely recognized that agriculture can be part of the solution to climate change. The worldwide agriculture sector currently accounts for between 19 percent and 29 percent of total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. A combination of policies, investments and targeted action is critical to achieve a low-carbon and climate-resilient agriculture sector.

But the question arises: Where will the money to fund this transition come from? Can farmers alone finance the productivity and climate change adaptation and mitigation changes that are needed?

The vast majority of climate finance has traditionally flowed to other sectors, accentuating even more the shortfall in finance for agriculture.

Due to perceptions of low profitability, along with high actual and perceived risks, lenders often severely limit the flows of finance directed to smallholder farmers and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in agriculture. Without access to capital, farmers cannot invest in raising their productivity and incomes, becoming more resilient to climate change and mitigating their farms’ negative impact on climate.

But untapped sources of capital exist for making agriculture more climate-smart — namely, in climate finance. A recent World Bank discussion paper, Making Climate Finance Work in Agriculture, explores ways to use climate finance to dramatically increase the flows of capital directed to smallholder farmers and agricultural SMEs, aiming to deliver positive climate outcomes.

In the Northern tip of Mauritania lies the Nouadhibou Free Zone. Created in 2013 with financial and technical support from the World Bank, the first international partner to do so, it benefits from a 110-kilometer coastline on the Atlantic Ocean and an exclusive economic zone of 230,000 square kilometers. Its waters are among the most seafood-rich in the world, with a capacity of 1,500,000 tons per year.

The free zone offers investment opportunities in industries, logistics, tourism, retail business and tertiary sectors. However, creating a competitiveness hub in the fishing sector is one of the paramount objectives of the zone, given the importance of the sector for the Mauritanian economy. It represents 5.8 percent of the GNP, accounts for 18 percent of the total exports, and contributes to an estimated 40,000 jobs.

In March 2016, the World Bank approved the Nouadhibou Eco-Seafood Cluster Project (Projet Eco-Pôle Halieutique) with an International Development Association (IDA) grant of $7.75 million out of a total project amount of $9.25 million.

The objective of the project is to support the development of a fishing-sector hub in the Nouadhibou Free Zone aimed at promoting the sustainable management of fisheries and creating prosperity for the local communities.
A worker at the Free Zone certified Star Fish factory (Photo by Steve Utterwulghe)

While the Free Zone has already achieved critical results — such as the attraction of a few international investors in food processing and fish exports, the completion of commercial viability studies of the deep-seawater port and the airport, and the elaboration of a draft law on public-private partnerships (PPPs) — some constraints affecting more specifically the fishing sector remain. They include, among other things, the lack of productive diversification, an integrated value-chain, know-how about certification and international standards, and the octopus fishing quota system.

In addition, the lack of structured dialogue among the various public and private stakeholders in the fishing sector had been identified as a fundamental impediment to the development of the hub’s competitiveness.

Louise Cord, the World Bank Country Director, who recently visited Nouadhibou to officially launch the project with the President of the Free Zone, commended the Free Zone Authority for creating a Public-Private Dialogue (PPD) Task Force in 2015.

Graduating university students in Kazakhstan. Photo: Maxim Zolotukhin / The World Bank

Just to be clear, this is not about the American TV show formerly hosted by President-elect Donald Trump and recently taken over by actor and former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. This is about apprenticeships in the real world.

Being an apprentice is a great way to enter the job market, especially if you are just out of school and unsure what the future holds. For employers, an apprenticeship program is a relatively low-cost and low-risk option to discover talent and establish a pipeline of future employees.

So, why is there not a booming apprenticeship industry? The challenge is often the lack of a reliable marketplace for matching demand and supply. Several start-ups are aiming to fill that gap.

GetMyFirstJob does exactly that in the United Kingdom. This online tool helps job seekers identify and explore apprenticeship and training opportunities based on their skills and interests. Potential candidates are then matched with partnering employers, colleges and training providers.

Fuzu — Swahili for "successful" — is a Kenyan-Finnish employment platform that aims to bring the best of Finland’s education and innovation systems to job seekers in Africa. Their motto is, “Dream. Grow. Be Found.” Fuzu works with a diverse range of partners, such as M-Kopa and Equity Bank, to provide job seekers with career opportunities and insights on the job market. Employers have at their disposal an effective recruitment system and pay-for-performance solutions. In a short time, Fuzu has established a community of more than 180,000 users and more than 100 companies.

Last week, Andela received the U.S. Secretary of State’s Corporate Excellence Award for SMEs. The U.S. Executive Director of the World Bank Group is hosting a “brown-bag lunch” discussion with their CEO this Wednesday at the Bank's headquarters.

From Berlin to Cairo, from Medellín to New York City, new start-ups are flourishing in the heart of the city instead of occupying suburban areas or remote technology parks. This is the new model of start-up innovation ecosystems propelled by the so-called “fourth industrial revolution.”

The city’s vibrant start-up scene is a recent phenomenon. With more than 14,500 start-ups and nearly $6 billion in venture capital investments, New York City today has one of the largest and most vibrant start-up ecosystems in the world. Just 10 years ago, the start-up community in the city was small, scattered, and disorganized.

The incredible transformation of the city’s start-up scene provides a few key insights on the characteristics and potential impact of the urban ecosystem model:

Global competition to attract foreign and domestic direct investment is so high that nearly all countries offer incentives (such as tax holidays, customs duty exemptions and subsidized loans) to lure in investors. In the European Union, the 28 member states spent 93.5 billion euros on non-crisis State Aid to businesses in 2014. In the United States, local governments provided and average of US$80.4 billion in incentives each year from 2007 to 2012.

In order to better understand the prevalence of incentives worldwide, the Investment Climate team in the Trade & Competitiveness Global Practice of the World Bank Group reviewed the incentives policy of 137 countries. Results showed that all of the countries that were surveyed provide incentives, either as tax or customs-duty exemptions or in other forms. Table 1 (below) shows the rate at which these instruments are used across advanced and emerging economies. For instance, tax holidays are least common in OECD countries and are most prevalent in developing economies. In some regions they are the most-used incentive.[1]

However, despite offering incentives, few countries meet all the requirements of a fully transparent incentives policy. These include: mandating by law, and maintaining in practice, a database and inventory of incentives available to investors; listing in the inventory all aspects of key relevance to stakeholders (such as the specific incentive provided, the eligibility criteria, the awarding and administration process, the legal reference and the awarded amounts); making the inventory publicly available in a user-friendly format; requiring by law the publication of all formal references of incentives; and making the incentives easily accessible to stakeholders in practice. A T&C study now under way on incentives transparency in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region showed that none of the eight countries analyzed has a fully transparent incentives policy. (See Graph 1, below.)